In a previous article, I detailed the history of MQTT and how it came to be one of the most commonly-used protocols when it comes to the Internet of Things. I ended that article by asking several questions: Why would someone choose MQTT over HTTP as a communication protocol? And why choose MQTT over enterprise messaging systems like AMQP? As I said then, to answer those questions, it helps to first understand how MQTT works. Then I’ll discuss some of the problems it has faced in recent times.

What the world knows about Chris Dancy: He is the most connected human on earth. What we know about him (because he visited us): He's a very stimulating, likeable guy, who knows about the power of the data we each produce every day. The days with Chris were inspiring and we created 2 videos to try encapsulate his ideas.

Did you just receive a last-minute request for a customer call and are now frantically looking for a free meeting room? Do you spontaneously need to schedule a meeting and can’t figure out were to go? Fret no longer, PRTG has got you covered!

What the world knows about Chris Dancy: He is the most connected human on earth. What we know about him (because he visited us): He's a very stimulating, likeable guy, who knows about the power of the data we all produce every day. The days with Chris were very inspiring and we created two videos to try encapsulate his ideas.

Many large and medium-sized companies rely on SAP as their ERP solution for business-critical areas. One reason they use SAP is for its high availability features. A system failure or a performance degradation will cause high expenditures in IT and cause work restrictions for the users and customers and using a highly available database will prevent this from happening.

The days of BYOD have changed the way we deal with our workplace. We now use private devices much more naturally in the workplace, perform certain work tasks using them, and are generally much more flexible. But what are the consequences if more and more employees bring more and more IoT devices to work?

Your PRTG is up and running. You’ve built a flawless device tree with everything perfectly organized in accordance with your network hierarchy. You’re getting email, SMS and push notifications when things are down or problematic.But now the CIO wants regular reports about the uptime and availability of a critical application or service you provide to end users. The CIO will be sharing these reports with the rest of the executive team, so you need to keep it “high level”. Where do you start?

If it feels like the Internet of Things (IoT) has kind of gone from zero to ubiquitous hype in the space of no time at all, you're not wrong: it's only been around in its current form since the late 90s. Now I know, many might argue that there was a "smart" toaster in the 70s or a monitored coffee pot in the 80s, but the IoT as we now know it only really took shape at the turn of the century. And while it showed some potential right from the early days, it needed a few developments before it could truly become useful.

A few weeks ago I wrote about 11 IT relics from the 90s. Your feedback was overwhelming. So many of you have contributed personal stories and experiences from that time, and there are more every day! If you haven't seen the article, check it out: You Experienced IT in the 90s If You Know These Relics All your stories got me thinking about how we actually did IT support two decades ago. The time is not so long ago, but still the procedures of today are hardly comparable with the those of the past, some of which were very complex. Four quite typical scenarios from the time between 1999 and 2004 are still in my memory. How was IT support back at that time?

In an ongoing series of articles about monitoring healthcare IT, I've discussed monitoring the big picture, as well as monitoring the Picture Archiving and Communication System and the integration engine. Now, I want to cover the modalities. And monitoring these is not as simple as you would expect.

We live in an age of irresistible Al hype. Artificial intelligence has not only defeated the world's best Go players*, but has revolutionized our healthcare industry as well as the way we find knowledge. And as if that weren't enough, the insatiable AI monster also tries its digital hand as an artist. But what if AI has been using us for a long time to become more intuitive and human-like, and the big tech companies are doing a brilliant job of hiding it?